10 Things You Need to Know about Harriet Tubman
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With the North Star and her Christian faith as guides, Harriet Tubman led approximately fifteen Underground Railroad trips from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to free northern states and Canada. From 1849 to 1860, she guided an estimated 70 slaves to freedom during her lifetime. After settling as a free woman in New York, Harriet Tubman made speeches and worked with anti-slavery community leaders to protest slavery.
“No fear of the lash, the bloodhound, or the fiery stake, could divert her from her self-imposed task of leading as many as possible of her people from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” —Great Women in American History by Rebecca Price Janney
What Inspired Harriet Tubman?
Though physically imposing women, recognized for being as strong as a man, Harriet Tubman’s greatest power came from her faith in God to carry her through trouble. When people were surprised by her daring courage in successful escapes, she would always reply, “It wasn’t me. It was the Lord!’ In her journeys, some described her as “bold to the point of brazenness.” She asked people along the escape route for assistance with no apologies. Several times, men with her turned back and returned to their slave homes in fear while Harriet Tubman continued, leading the remaining slaves in their journey to freedom. She expected God’s help and received it in her missions.
10 Important Events in Harriet Tubman’s Life
1. Harriet Tubman was born into slavery named Araminta (“Minty) Ross in 1820 or 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland, one of nine children in a slave family. She married free man John Tubman and changed her first name to her mother’s name, Harriet Green Ross.
2. Harriet had a severe head injury when she was about 13 years old. She got between an overseer and a friend escaping slavery, and a two-pound weight hit her on the forehead. The injury left her unable to sit up or walk for months, and she had occasional blackouts for the rest of her life.
3. A Quaker named Miss Parsons stopped to talk to Harriet working in a field. Miss Parson hinted at how slaves could travel north to freedom on the Underground Railroad. When Harriet heard rumors she would be sold “down the river” to worse slavery conditions, she ran to Miss Parsons’ farm for further directions on the Underground Railroad.
4. Her first escape attempt with two of her brothers was not successful, as they turned and ran back early in the trek north, preferring “the devil they knew.”
5. Harriet knew free African Americans lived in Philadelphia and New York and followed the stars and the banks of rivers to Pennsylvania on her first successful mission in 1849. A man she met on the Underground Railroad wrote the word “Pennsylvania” on a piece of paper so she’d know when she arrived there (Harriet could not read or write).
6. During Harriet’s first year in the north, she worked as a laundress, cleaning woman, cook, and seamstress at hotels and clubhouses. She saved most of her earnings to pay for trips back to Maryland to rescue slaves.
7. Harriet Tubman was a Civil War Scout who walked battlefields with a sharpshooter rifle.
8. Harriet also nursed wounded and diseased soldiers in the Civil War, though Congress ridiculed her in her attempt to receive a pension for her efforts in the war.
9. Several publications of her biography—by Sarah Bradford (1869, 1886) and Robert Taylor (1901)—embellished the facts of Harriet Tubman’s life. Proceeds from an article by Robert Taylor helped pay Harriet’s mortgage on her home.
10. Ninety-three years old and poor, Harriet Tubman died in 1913 at her residence, which she had converted into Harriet Tubman’s Home for Aged Negroes in Auburn, New York.
10 Important Quotes by Harriet Tubman
1. “Thanks to Him, on my underground railroad, I never run my train off the track, and I never lose a passenger.”
2. “I think slavery is the next thing to hell.”
3. “Oh, Lord, convert ole master; Oh, dear Lord, change dat man’s heart, and make him a Christian.”
4. “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person, now that I was free. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.”
5. “I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom, I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in the old cabin quarter, with the old folks, and my brothers and sisters.”
6. “Now I’ve been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.”
7. “Every time I saw a white man, I was afraid of being carried away.”
8. “I think there’s many a slaveholder’ll get to Heaven. They don’t know better. They acts up to the light they have.”
9. “I would have been able to free a thousand more slaves if I could only have convinced them that they were slaves.”
10. “If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.”
10 Things You Should Know about Harriet Tubman
1. Harriet Tubman led slaves from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to the free northern states, traveling with no money, maps, compass, or food supply on their way north.
2. Before she successfully escaped, her husband, John Tubman, would report her missing the minute he realized she had run away.
3. She was separated from her brothers, sisters, nieces, and parents in her journeys to and new life up north.
4. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made Harriet’s Underground Railroad travels more perilous. The law passed by the United States Congress made it a heavily fined crime with jail time for citizens to harbor a runaway slave. “Agents” of slave owners were also permitted by the law to hunt for slaves and return them to their owners without a trial of any kind. Harriet’s Underground Railroad destination moved north of the Canadian border due to the Fugitive Slave Act.
5. Harriet carried a small pistol on her missions—to encourage fearful slaves and protect them from slave catchers.
6. Harriet Tubman sang the songs “Go Down Moses” and “Bound For The Promised Land” during escape journeys and said in her speeches that she changed the tempo of the songs to indicate to escaping slaves whether it was safe to come out of the woods or not.
7. Her route to northern states and then Canada was guided by nature—the North Star, which she kept in front of her and to her left in the sky, and moss that grew on the north side of trees.
8. Among Harriet’s hiding places were a German immigrant’s haystack and a free black family’s storage hole for potatoes.
9. Harriet Tubman met many decent, anti-slavery, white people in her work with the Underground Railroad up north and on her escape journeys from Maryland.
10. Harriet Tubman made speeches at anti-slavery and women’s rights conventions in the late 1850s, giving her a platform to tell stories of the horrors of slavery. She was often introduced using a pseudonym, and written copies of the speeches do not exist.
What We Can Learn from Harriet Tubman for Today
My daughter portrayed Harriet Tubman in her sixth-grade class’s Civil War pageant. I was proud she chose to represent a woman so courageous and known, in my daughter’s speech, as “a good worker.” Her Harriet Tubman costume was plain, unlike the full-skirted gowns of girls portraying Southern belles, which I had once been for Halloween. Learning about Harriet Tubman’s life, with her physical strength, vibrant spirit, and trust in God—whom she traveled with hand in hand—is a remarkable journey in itself. We honor her today as one of the great women in American and world history, inspiring us to respect the basic human rights of all people.
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars and change the world.”—Harriet Tubman
Quotation Sources
(The first three quotes are excerpted from Google Images posters, quotes four through five from Crosswalk.com’s “People of Faith” article on Harriet Tubman, and quotes six through ten are excerpted from “Harriet Tubman Quotes to Turn Yourself into a Leader.”)
Photo Credit: ©Kirt Morris/Unsplash
This article is part of our People of Christianity catalog that features the stories, meaning, and significance of well-known people from the Bible and history. Here are some of the most popular articles for knowing important figures in Christianity:
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